ACO presents the converging worlds of old, modern and very new music

By Jennifer Gall

Opening the concert was Samuel Adams' new composition, Movements for Us and Them, commissioned by the ACO, and for me this performance stole the show.

To conclude the evening, the ACO gave Hayden’s 'London Symphony' a grand airing.Credit:Nic Walker

Adams explains the work as a response to the baroque concerto grosso form, in which he explores the relationship between the composer, orchestra and the audience. Adams clearly had the measure of the ACO and his work fed their strengths: extreme responsiveness; swift intuitive communication; perceptive interpretation of experimental music; consummate skill creating sound textures.

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the New Millenium, Adams' work creates in sound music on which to balance the weight of the world. Fluidity of musical ideas and communication between players and music is key, and I was moved by the subtle emotional power of this new work.

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We will always wonder whether Shostakovich wrote his Cello Concerto No.1 for the Russian people, for himself, or to satisfy an oppressive regime. Perhaps the work was motivated by all these requirements. The Allegretto movement opened with the strident clarinet and supporting woodwinds probing into every mental recess against which Isserlis’s cello jumped and darted like a live thing responding as if being chased.

Isserlis plays this work like a man in a world tipped up on end by madness, clinging with his finger nails to a sense of order. His expressive face and gestural style of performance are well suited to the drama in the music.

In the second movement, the disturbing lullaby disintegrated into Cello histrionics that built into a ferocious orchestral unison. This subsided into spectral harmonics in ghostly duet with the celeste to fill the auditorium with unrelenting snowflakes until once more the madness seized the music and the orchestra plays like puppets to a crazily imposed conformity.

Steven Isserlis played 'Cello Concerto No. 1', 'like a man in a world tipped up on end by madness'.Credit:Satoshi Aoyagi

Movement III, the Cadenza, was a monumental cello solo in which soloist and instrument fell apart, splintering in shattered sounds to re-form, leaping and chasing the jagged melodies towards the final Allegro con moto. This final movement was evocative of a dark circus come to perform for the end of time. Together Isserlis and Tognetti created an exhilarating and at times terrifying version of Shostakovich’s masterpiece.

Elena Kats Chernin is a strong visual composer, using rhythm and a strong affinity for dance forms to drive and shape her music. Knock One Night, commissioned for the ACO, tells the powerful story of a family living in fear of a wartime journey that will tear their lives apart. The most beautiful opening movement began with a cluster chord creating a fog-like sound denoting memory from which the guiding melodic motif emerged.

The second movement described the dreaded sound of the knock that would precipitate the journey into darkness, with evocative physical knocking from the musicians interwoven with the music. Train is the movement of deliverance, when the oppressive fear was lifted from the family and the journey ultimately leads to the final movement, Peace, in which new life in Australia was evoked through long sustained chords reflecting space, safety and tranquility.

To conclude the evening, the ACO gave Hayden’s London Symphony a grand airing. There was nothing contrived about the joyousness with which the ensemble executed the dramatic dynamic contrasts and the dazzling interchange of melodies. Sally Walker’s flute shone brightly in the Andante, and the immaculate timing of the woodwind and brass players created pleasing warmth and depth in this performance. This was indeed a concert to celebrate converging worlds of old, modern and very new music.